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Friday, November 23, 2012

A lot of interesting stuff around at present. My problem is to find the time to write about it!

Julia Gillard's Slater & Gordon troubles continue. Regular commenter kvd expressed the view some time ago that this case was the biggest threat the PM faced. Now that she has cleared the deck on other things, he may well be right. Certainly the opposition seems to think so!

I know from conversations just how polarising this issue has become. My friend and fellow New Englander Paul Barratt has been blogging on the broader issue. The insanity of Australia excluding itself from its own migration zone makes me wish for Monty Python.

Nathan Tinkler's mining empire continues to implode, while the NSW ICAC (Independent Commission against Corruption) inquiry into possible corruption involving former NSW Minister Ian Macdonald continues. The link between the two is geography, the gold offered by New England coal. The difference is that whatever his business faults, Mr Tinkler actually created something.

I did laugh, kvd. When I first started eating Indian food, I was instructed in the etiquette I should follow in eating with my fingers. Years later, I still remember the strange looks I go in London when at an Indian restaurant I did just that.

I think much will depend on the US being able to maintain face in their relations with China. Being able to say they are still 'the leaders of the free world yada yada' while their power diminishes.

I don't see why China's internal problems should affect its military ambitions. Many countries impoverish their people with military spending.

I really don't know what to make of the Slater & Gordon stuff. My first reaction is that it is a beat up by the Opposition. Julia seems to have set up a fund that was then abused. It doesn't seem she is being accused of doing anything wrong herself. But I haven't followed it closely so am open to correction by others who have followed this and know more.

Evan I think your first reaction is probably correct. That old saying about "where there's smoke there's fire" applies, with everybody so inclined busily fanning the smoke at the moment, desparately seeking an actual spark.

Anyway, lest I be accused yet again of being a PM Gillard apologist, let me just say this about today's breathless announcement of possible proof that 20-odd years ago she may have 'lied' about not recollecting that she had a hand in organising a mortgage two years prior to that:

If she actually did organise said mortgage - so what? What does that actually prove?

This will go on and on because innuendo has worked time and time again, and it's one of the main things I despise about both sides of politics.

It was an interesting piece, Evan, although I haven't properly absorbed it.

kvd, I think that a lot of people are cynical about both sides beyond the normal Australian cynicism. In the end, it's a bit of a case of making a judgement as to the best worst choice.

One thing that I do find interesting (depressing?) is the level of disenchantment among what might be called the more thoughtful. I wasn't quite sure how to put that, but it seems to come through among many who try to write on and analyse issues.

I was trying to work out when it first really appeared. There is an interesting post there, but it would take some work.

Jim pleaee by all means investigate just when this disenchantment appeared. In my case it came from a basic belief that eventually actual facts would trump innuendo - but I'm still waiting.

The thing is, people will believe what they deep down inside wish to believe, and mostly the ugly somehow satisfies more. Anyway, I don't have the words to put it more succinctly, but perhaps this writer did:

2 Tim. 4:3For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths

Interesting quote, kvd. I recognize that we are talking about different types of disenchantment, one old, the other recent. Yet the recent disenchantment is among people who are, by their, nature still involved. Are we at a stage where those wishing to believe the ugly deep inside are chasing out the good? A Say's Law of morality?

Not that you were expecting one, but I have no answer for your question. Perhaps the only 'truth' emerging from this present witch hunt is that you can rest assured it will serve as a blueprint for Labor's attacks in a couple of years time, after the coalition wins the next election.

Whoever wins, I just wish they'd be allowed to govern, not forced to grub around in the dirt; it diminishes all of us.

I watched the presser today, and it took PM Gillard all of 53 minutes wading her way through farcical questioning to actually get to the one I asked above:

Even if her memory of events surrounding her knowledge of the mortgage was wrong, then what actually was wrong with S&G making those funds available? Silence...

Then I watched Question Time and I have to say I was equally unimpressed with Ms Bishop's 'new information'.

Then I see Sinclair Davidson on Catallaxy piously referring to her quite legitimate question as to who to believe if it gets to a question of one word or another - under a heading about 'is this how our PM treats a citizen' or some such, and I thought of David Hicks and Cornelia Rau, and how life seemed so much better when people of good faith acted in the best interests of the country, and avoided such puerile unsubstantiated pettiness.

This morning Bishop even went so far as to say the Prime Minister had driven the "stolen vehicle that the bank robbers took to the bank".

- taken from a report in today's SMH.

For Neil's benefit I would like to make it quite clear that my interest in this is not in defending Ms Gillard; if she is eventually found culpable, well so be it. My fascination comes from a close business relationship with many law firms large and small for maybe 25 years. I believe I understand how they operated in the years in question, and from my knowledge, there has been absolutely nothing produced (let alone 'proven') which indicates any illegal action on the part of the PM.

That said, I believe Ms Bishop's statement this morning verges on the defamatory, so I now expect she has something further with which to back it up - over and above all this innuendo flying around.

I don't know kvd. You may be right. One risk is that what was sloppy practice back then may be unacceptable practice now. Certainly the opposition runs the apparent risk that, like the carbon tax, they may overreach themselves.

This morning Bishop even went so far as to say the Prime Minister had driven the "stolen vehicle that the bank robbers took to the bank".

Jim, in the grand scheme of things I guess it doesn't matter that in later reports from the same website this has been amended to had created but for my money, if anybody suggested I had driven the stolen vehicle that the bank robbers took to the bank then I'd be consulting a lawyer for serious reparations.

It is now reduced to farce - is my point, given that this to-the-minute report probably mis-reported Ms Bishop, yet we are to take reports/recollections of two decades ago as verbatim gospel truth?

Just an update before Parliamentary Q-time; it now seems that PM Gillard wrote a letter to WA Corporate Affairs confirming that the entity in question was not a trade union entity.

As far as I can see there is nothing particularly exceptional about that, EXCEPT she has several times suggested there was no need to advise the AWU of its existence, because she was being instructed by AWU officeholders.

I don't think she has misled Parliament, but what I do think is that she probably created a conflict of interest, and particularly so if no information on this entity was passed to her partners.

I'm guessing it was this probable conflict of interest which saw her and S&G part company, but as to if this constitutes a reason for her resignation, I am very doubtful.

Also interesting to me is that neither the press nor the opposition seems to be stating the case as above - they appear to be concentrating on the misleading of Parlt. - which I don't think she has done.

Right, well I watched Q-time, and as far as I'm concerned the opposition did not lay a finger on the PM. Given 15 minutes' clear air, Mr Abbott essentially walked back his morning comments to something like "it's not the done thing" - but then failed to press that very point.

On another place (which shall not be mentioned :) I withdrew from commenting on this because it was clear that most every commenter was bringing to the table their own inbuilt political prejudices - and failing by that to get to anything substantial.

If I were Mr Abbott now I think I would actually announce a coalition policy/promise: as the first act of his government to institute a Royal Commission into trade unions in Australia. The old saw about 'don't announce until you know the results' clearly does not apply in this case, and I'm sure that most of Australia would heartily cheer.

Ms Gillard's role is at worst a sideshow in what is a great and continuing tragedy in Australia: the usurpation of workers' rights (and it seems, funds) by a favoured few. It is time the whole edifice was subjected to a forensic examination - at a more professional level than that exhibited by Ms Bishop over the past few days.

Elsewhere I said I'd be inclined to think Ms Gillard, at that time, was a naive, newby, solicitor. Ms Bishop at this point has no such excuse for her inability to fossick out what it was that she could legitimately claim was reprehensible about the PM's actions so long ago.

And now, best shut up. Thank you Jim. If any of the above causes you angst feel free to delete.

Interesting comments, kvd. I suspect that the idea of a Royal Commission into the union movement would give Mr Abbott a "legitimate" platform to continue his campaign in a more neutral fashion. What a mess!

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